The present invention relates generally to charging an energy storage system, and more particularly but not exclusively, to an integrated charging system employing both conductive and inductive modes.
Many high-performance energy storage solutions now employ series-connected modules that, in turn, are series and parallel combinations of individual battery cells. Battery packs used with electric vehicles store large amounts of energy in a small space, producing high energy densities. The energy is converted into mechanical energy by the power train to move the vehicle, among other uses.
Conventional charging systems employ either a conductive system or an inductive system. For electric vehicle implementations, it has become a current standard to use conductive charging system for transferring energy into the energy storage system. There are some advantages to use of inductive charging systems which has resulted in after-market products to add parallel inductive charging systems.
Electric vehicles are particularly known for having tight budgets on size, weight, and cost, which are often interrelated. Simply adding an entire parallel inductive charging system to a vehicle, either during manufacture or after-market risks degrading performance, safety, and reliability.
What is needed is an apparatus and method for efficiently integrating inductive and conductive charging systems.